TBH if the lightening is so strong that it 'could' melt solder (more like
blast it!) nothing is going to stop it, the copper pipe will evaporate
anyway. so i think it's a be immaterial! (pun intended!)

just whilst on another old wives tale, don't forget if you do run around
disconnecting coaxes to radio & things during an electrical storm....don't
just reconnect them after it has passed by..you stand more chance of
damaging things that way as the coax will be holding quite a nice charge,
just waiting for you to discharge it through the radio when you reconnect!
get a nice block of metal or dexion or WHY and mount the opposite gender
connector to it and then short all centre & outer pins, then ground that to
a water or radiator pipe (as long as it is metal!!)

that's another good way of grounding the radio in the shack also, i found my
radiator pipe had a better impedance than my earth stake!!

mike G7BNF


"PowerHouse Communications" wrote in message
...

"Bruce Robertson" wrote in message
...

...I then cut it off about 6 inches above the ground and soldered bare
solid
copper wire (gauge? fattest home depot had) between
the ground rod and antenna mast.
I did not weather protect this soldered connection as the article
suggested.
(I may redo it at some point and then weather protect it).


Just a thought here, but did you drill any holes in the pipe to insert the
wire into before soldering? My thinking is that if the wire is just
soldered to the outside of the pipe (without any other means of holding
the
wire attached to the pipe,) that should a lightning strike ever happen,
the
intense heat from the huge amount of electrical discharge may just melt
the
solder and allow the wire to become detached from the grounding pipe.
This
would effectively make the whole setup useless...

Soldering is a good idea, however, there should be another means to insure
that the wire remains attached (as long as possible) should the solder
melt...

PH




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